My Nikkor isn't stiff enough.

[2F/2F]

Should cost $40 or so to get your lens CLAd. Whether that is worth it or not is up to you...but it means you don't take a risk of not being able to get the thing back together, and you don't have to buy the proper supplies to perform the service yourself, not to mention the time. If you were going to service lenses often, sure...but in this case, I would just take it somewhere and see what they say.

[Steve Smith]

Not difficult to do if you are familiar with taking lenses apart and reassembling them correctly.

I'm quite good at the first part of that procedure!


Steve.

[EASmithV]

Yes I have two Nikkor 1.4s... One of them is the lens that originally came with the Nikon, and is one that I tried to "fix". I recently got the other one (the one that is not stiff enough) because I wanted a faster lens like the one I had originally.

Since then I've told myself never to take apart anything smaller than a Speed Graphic... And only If I have instructions...

[EASmithV]

What If I take the element section from the old lens, and drop it in the new lens? The old lens was plenty stiff.

[archphoto]

For the grease go to www.micro-tools.com ,
they have a lot of other things for repairs aswell.

Peter

[dougjgreen]

I have the opposite problem, my 55mm Micro is too stiff........make of that what you will.

Shame it's a Micro that's too stiff.

[flatulent1]

Shame it's a Micro that's too stiff.

And only 55mm at that...

[rosey]

To the OP: If a lens isn't stiff enough, crush one Viagra tablet and rub it on the lens mount. Cialis is best for screw mounts.

[David Brown]

I have the opposite problem, my 55mm Micro is too stiff...

If this persists for more than 4 hours, see your camera repairman ...

[John_Nikon_F]

All jokes aside, the late rubber focus ring non-AI and the AI lenses tend to have the stiffer focus rings. AIS lenses seem to have gone back to the smooth feel of the metal focus ring non-AI lenses, except for lenses like the 55f2.8, which are stiffer, but then again, so are the older 55f3.5's. Even my early compensating diaphragm 55f3.5's were pretty stiff in focus.

It's possible that the 50f1.4 that you're dealing with was dropped @ one time. That could cause a loose feeling focus ring. I once owned a 50f1.4 Nikkor-S that had the ring become disengaged from the helix. Had to pull the focus ring toward the camera body to focus the lens, otherwise it would just spin.

-J